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Viewing Moving from Beginner to Intermediate German via the InternetMoving from Beginner to Intermediate German via the Internet
By James LaRue This article is about how to move past a beginner's level in German by using the language in your daily life. You may not think you have this ability if you're just beginning to learn. However, by following some of these ideas, you'll progress much faster than you would have if you had only stayed with your beginner's course or textbook. You will soon discover online newspapers, podcasts, and free online courses and will probably never pay for another language course again, because you won't need it. Here are two online German courses: • userweb.port.ac.uk/~joyce1/abinitio • german.about.com The best way to progress quickly in learning German is to listen above your current level of understanding to the spoken language. Most people think they can't do this, because they won't be able to understand what is being said. This is true, but only for the time being. Soon words and phrases will stand out and you will become familiar with them. By using podcasts, you can listen to conversational German any time you want. Try Schlaflos in München (www.schlaflosinmuenchen.com). This is a podcast by Annik Rubens. She also produces a podcast called Slow German (www.slowgerman.com). There is a transcript of each episode. By listening to these podcasts, my ability to understand German has greatly improved. Just by listening. There will always be words that I keep hearing and I get curious about them. Then I go to the dictionary to look them up. Following this process, I don't easily forget new words, because they were words I really wanted to know. The idea is to invent ways to fit German into your life, so it's not something outside of your daily activities. If you don't do this, you might never get around to learning. Here are more ways to include German in your daily life: Change the settings of your email accounts so that the menus are in German. Gmail, Yahoo, MySpace and Facebook will let you do this. For AOL, you can just type aol.de into your browser and sign on with your usual name and password, except that all the menu options as well as news content is in German. You can still type all your emails in English. By using the menu commands, you will be interacting with the German language during your workday or after hours, while doing the things you'd normally do anyway, like emailing people. When you're reading German and you don't know a word, use an online German dictionary like dict.cc to look up the words. For Internet searches, use google.de instead of google.com, or just set the language preferences in Google to German. If you make news.google.com your homepage, set that to German and get the headlines in German. Most software has options for language settings and the idea is to use the software you use every day, but with the German language menus, as another way to incorporate German into your daily life. I downloaded the German service pack for Microsoft Office at www.microsoft.com, so I could use the menus in Word and Excel in German. Instead of reading the news in English online, read the news in German at www.spiegel.de. You can also see if there is a German Meetup Group for your area by going to www.meetup.com. It's a great way to get together with other people and practice! About the Author: James LaRue is a self-taught - or rather a self-teaching - language learner who uses the Internet and other resources to learn foreign languages. He also tries to get into at least two or three conversations with speakers of Spanish or other languages every day. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com More free articles: 1st Rate Articles - 1stRateArticles.com |
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